Legal Commentary

Buying Respectability

By Big Tent Democrat

Matt Yglesias:

[Marty Peretz is] scheduled to be honored by Harvard University since a lot of his famous and important friends got together a bunch of money to give to Harvard in exchange for Harvard honoring their friend. Since Harvard is in the business of raising money, they have every intention of keeping the money and going ahead with the honoring[. . . .] It’s really too bad that Harvard has chosen to take this tack. [. . .] My alma mater is doing a disservice to their brand and to public understanding of the issues by deliberately obscuring things in this manner.

It would be more honest to say that Harvard is a business run for the benefit of its faculty and administrators. The business model of this business is the exchange of prestige in exchange for money. Peretz has friends who have money that they are willing to exchange for some prestige, and Harvard intends to take the money. It is what it is.

Good post from Matt. He's been out in front on calling Peretz out for a lot of years now.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 17, 2010 (boomark / email).